


the other side

by thebrotherswholoved



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Canon compliant (I guess), Car Accident (brief mention), Deceased!Sam Winchester, Drunk Driving, Grief/Mourning, Grieving!Dean Winchester, M/M, Married!Wincest, Oneshot, See you on the other side, Song Lyrics, Suicide, Suicide (Non-Graphic), Symbolism, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, Wincest - Freeform, domestic undertones, hurt!Dean Winchester, real angst, song prompt, widower
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-14
Updated: 2019-06-14
Packaged: 2020-05-07 19:56:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19216435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebrotherswholoved/pseuds/thebrotherswholoved
Summary: "And if something happens, we will deal with it together. And if we die? We'll do that together, too" (Sam Winchester to Dean, 1320).Suicide is never a valid option. This is a fictional work attempting to depict the psychotically, irrationally, erotically codependent (thanks, Zach) relationship between two troubled characters who depend on one another beyond the healthy norm.





	the other side

**Author's Note:**

> You are not alone. If you are seriously contemplating suicide, please utilize [this list](https://www.healthyplace.com/suicide/suicide-hotline-phone-numbers) of suicide help lines/hotlines. There's always another way—we all want you here!
> 
> Always Keep Fighting.

_Never thought I'd feel like this._  
_Strange to be alone, yeah._  
_But we'll be together._  
_Carved in stone, carved in stone, carved in stone..._

 

* * *

 

Anyone who has ever stood smack in the middle of nowhere can vouch for the flurry of emotions Dean is experiencing.

 

His tears are as innumerable as the icy shards of snow falling atop his head and beating against his skin like acid rain and the temperature outside seems to promise him that he’ll go home to his empty house with a budding sickness courtesy of a malicious world and it’s assault on a man simply trying to scrape by. 

 

It’s no secret that he’s hurting. He’s in utter agony and he has no way of bandaging his injuries or licking his wounds clean because they don’t exist to the naked eye. Inside his chest, his scars are abundant and soaked in a bath of blood and rock salt, and it hurts like hell to breathe.

 

If only he could just... _stop_.

 

There’s nobody else at 4350 Killicks Road at nine thirty nine at night during the eye-of-the-hurricane period of the recent snow storm, and it’s easy to see why not. Anybody sane and with a lick of sense could surmise that even if the cold is tolerable, the blanketing sense of loneliness is incapacitating. But, that begs the question: when has a Winchester ever been considered normal, pragmatic, or even sane? 

 

Never, that’s when. Ergo, here stands Dean Winchester: in the middle of a dulling snowstorm while the sky fades into an overcast yellow-tinted grey above the snow covered cemetery grounds, an ominously moonless light splashing across the impeccable blanket of white. 

 

He bears no gifts, nor does he weep with a handkerchief to his green eyes—which have lost some of their iconic hue since the light departed from his life—while holding a bouquet of on-clearance flowers in his shaky hand. No, Dean stands in front of his late husband’s final resting place and succumbs to the whispers of the empty, glasslike silence by mentally falling prostrate before the headstone.The quietude is appalling yet simultaneously relieving, as it puts Dean at the mercy of his thoughts while allowing him to truly take in the moment. 

 

That’s when he realizes that it’s not his past trying to kill him: it’s the hush of the air and of his life as it renders him reticent at the best of times and painfully stitches his mouth shut at the worst. 

 

He can comprehend the simple anger that manifests deep within him at the memory of how his husband’s last text message— _’see you soon, don’t start Game of Thrones without me’_ —was followed by two police officers at his doorstep an hour later, hats in their hands as they silently communicated condolences that Dean never wanted to hear, but the drunk driver behind the wheel of the shitty four-door pickup truck that killed his husband deserves neither his anger nor his thoughts in general, and so he remains stoic. Sam’s words echo through his very bones: _“Anger doesn’t look that good on you, De. Come hug me instead."_

 

Dean had shut off his cellphones—all seven of them—and left all but one in the impala before stepping out onto the hallowed ground of Sam’s final resting place where just three months ago he had had his body interred. His communication to the outside world is irrelevant and arbitrary at this point in time, leaving him with his thoughts and the promise of freedom if he just grants himself mercy.

 

* * *

 

_“Alright, alright, if you’re gonna help me, you’ve gotta play the plaintiff.” Sam’s giggles echo through the halls of their shitty apartment before he steps out into the living room wearing a collegiate suit and tie tied backwards. He’s not wearing shoes and his socks are two different colors—they haven’t done rock paper scissors to see who has to do the laundry yet—and his hair is still messy from their horizontal dance session. It’s the most beautiful sight in the world to Dean._

 

_“This isn’t the kind of role play I was promised,” Dean feigns a pout. “Gimme my case.”_

 

_Sam fumbles with his sleeve and hums in thought. “Qualified immunity, Zadeh—“_

 

_“Zadeh versus Robinson, gotcha,” Dean finishes without missing a beat. He read through all eighteeen of Sam’s trial court cases that’re fair game for his mock trial exam so he could help him after he fell asleep the other night and despite understanding sub-one percent of the jargon, managed to gather some information on the topics. Gotta be a supportive husband somehow!_

 

_And so they argued, stumbled over complicated Latin “why do you need to know these, Sammy?” fallacies and condemnations, laughed in the middle of reading aloud because “Dean started pouting,” and ended up with blazers and ties flung over the arm of the sofa, hickeys in places Sam would need makeup to cover when he went someplace where he had to look presentable, heaving chests, and giddy smiles._

 

* * *

 

He’s wearing the blazer Sam flung over the side of their couch, the one that harbored far too many memories for Dean’s liking and the whispers imbedded in the aged faux leather which made him scrap the damn thing and resort to sitting on three pillows on the living room floor instead. It doesn’t really carry Sam’s scent anymore but the weight and the too-long, un-tailored length of the jacket arms  and how the button is diagonally sewed back into place after Dean ripped it off his lover in the heat of the moment are all Sam, all his brother. 

 

Under the blazer, Dean is wearing a blue-green plaid flannel that looks notoriously hideous with his other garments but the bereaved is none the wiser, having zoned out and fully dissociated while dressing today. It was Sam’s favorite flannel, the one he always used to wear just so Dean would compliment him and comment on how the colors match his eyes. Now, though, the colors appear to be fading underneath the white specks of snow falling atop his shoulders and chest, his clothing choices doing nothing to shield him from the cold. 

 

It’s okay, though. The faded green matches Dean’s now-faded apple-green eyes now. 

 

The blond’s pants are far too big on him—of course they are, they don’t belong to him—and his boots are at least guarding his feet from the foot and a half of snow blanketing the graveyard. Maybe it’s deeper than that. He doesn’t really know, nor does he care, especially while he’s being assaulted by both the dreadful silence and the putridly beautiful whispers of his past, when things were good. 

 

The sky is a now a musky wolf's gray as it looms above a man who has stopped his solemn, still blinking at the tombstone in front of him. He just now remembers why he had his husband’s body interred rather than giving him a hunter’s burial.

* * *

 

_“God, you’re fucking morbid, De.” The brunet, aged twenty six and smiling with his tongue out at his lover, whined._

 

 

_Dean was looking through a funeral home advertisement that was left on their doorstep one afternoon because, hey, what else is there to advertise in Nebraska? Besides corn and such, of course. He kept showing Sam pictures of headstones from the loveseat and yelling some variation of “I’ll haunt your ass if you don’t bury my ass under this one” to Sam, who happened to be chopping carrots in the kitchen._

 

_The blond scoffed and walked up behind his husband, wrapping his arms around his torso and kissing the exposed skin of his collarbone before holding the catalogue up to his face—no escape. “I’ll stop bein’ morbid if you just tell me which one you want. This is like a Buzzfeed quiz but more…us-ey.”_

 

_“Fine, gimme it,” Sam snatched the pages from Dean’s hand and smirks, shaking his head as he flips through them. God, they needed a hobby. Friday nights were looking dull and lachrymose…at least Jeopardy! would be on soon. After a few moments, Sam pointed at one plain, unenthusiastic slab of stone. “This one.”_

 

_Dean scrunched up his nose. “Really? That’s all you could come up with?”_

 

_“You’d never expect a legend like this guy to be buried under that lifeless thing.” Sam puffed out his chest with a laugh._

 

_“Was that a pun?”_

 

_“Let me finish making dinner before I give you an up close and personal with my knife here, Jerk.”_

 

* * *

 

And here he is, a legend buried under a rather dull slab of stone that the funeral home employee just kind of raised an eyebrow at when he chose it. The young man knew somehow that he shouldn’t question someone with such a distant look in his eye.

 

Dean kneels down into the snow, trousers getting absolutely soaked with freezing cold water, and winces at the sound of ice crunching beneath his weight: the first sound he’s heard in this place besides his own breathing. He removes his cellphone from his pocket and ignores the seventeen missed calls and thirty two texts from various IDs to text Castiel, the one person who never let his charges go. The message is four words long but carries more meaning than any essay he could ever compose.

 

_‘Carry on without me.’_

 

Six groggy crows are his only witnesses when Dean leans down to kiss the freezing cold top of his husband’s headstone and lay the bouquet down against the stone as he pulls his long-retired Colt M1911A1 from Sam’s too-big blazer with slow, shaky movements. The weight of the handgun against his palms is almost too real for him.

 

“I’m sorry I couldn’t be stronger, Sammy,” Dean croaks out a tearless sob, rough fingertips tracing the outline of the etched letters on the stone: _‘SAM WINCHESTER.’_

 

“But, hey, at least you’ll be able to beat my ass this time. ‘Cause I…I’m comin’ home.”

A pregnant pause fills the air between his lips and the headstone. “You’re my home.”

 

A few more moments break the ice between Dean and the idea of death before the sound of two clicks of bulky metal sound against the misty sky. 

 

The sound of a single gunshot scares the crows away. 

  

* * *

 

_Hold me, hold me tight, I'm falling._  
_Far away. Distant voices calling._  
_I'm so cold. I need you darling, yeah._

_I was down, but now I'm flying._  
_Straight across the great divide._  
_I know you're crying, but I'll stop you crying._  
_When I see you, I see you on the other side._  
_Yes. I'll see you. See you on the other side._  
_I'm gonna see you. See you on the other side._  
_God knows I'll see you, see you on the other side, yeah._

 

_—"See You on the Other Side," Ozzy Osbourne (1995)—_

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are always appreciated. Thanks for reading :)


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